Not Your Usual Night of Oprah, Daaling.

Leaving Grand Central Station on the Metro North Line and traveling for an hour and a half to the wealthy and manicured Greenwich, Connecticut felt a little bit like leaving the country. Is that the sign that I've finally become a true New Yorker? (Granted, if I got on the right train to start with, the trip would have been much more relaxing). Anyway, my evening ended up being quite the pleasant getaway capped with a surprisingly unique artistic performance.
It's amazing what working at a wine store can get you. A register transaction introduced me to Ted Huffman, the Artistic Director of the Greenwich Music Festival. (My naive self thought he meant Greenwich Village, ha!) Up for an adventure, I accepted an invitation to attend the opening night of their season. For the occasion they were producing The Runaway Slave, by the German avant-garde composer Hans Werner Henze. At once modern and worldly in sound, this hour and 30 minute work chronicles the life story of the Cuban slave, Esteban Montejo, who lived to be 113. Requiring a percussionist, classical guitarist, and flautist, the score is largely atonal and incredibly detailed. The guitar serves mostly to interlace the score with bits of Latin song, amalgamating to perhaps a perfect representation of modern Cuba.

The production proved to be artistically daring and subliminally sexy. It all took place on a raised marley floor stage, with a compactly seated audience eagerly awaiting. The upstage was occupied with more percussion instruments than the average educated individual can name- western, eastern, African, Caribbean, etc. The downstage was where the protagonist and his four dancers depicted the story. Intensely narrating was the actor/singer Eugene Perry, who mixed speaking with baritone and falsetto singing, even adding the middle ground of Sprechstimme. This cast of five opened themselves up to the point of vulnerability.

Zack Winokur's choreography was at once intelligently precise and primitively wild. The four dancers were of completely different body types, yet communicated and moved together beautifully. To me, this was the most captivating aspect of the production. The dancers were unyielding in their somewhat bipolar combination of preciseness, tension, and unrestrained wildness. At times using a detailed and well-executed movement vocabulary, they did not hesitate to change moods with little anticipation. A tense and intricate walk suddenly and spastically transitioned into an airborne leap plummeting the dancer to the floor. At other times, Capoeira-like fights combined violence with sensuality. Far from random, every moment was directly linked with Esteban Montejo's story and/or the music, never leaving a dull moment. Sitting in the audience, I never quite felt relaxed. If this were Wagner, that would be a problem. But for Henze, it was somehow fitting. Bravo to Artistic Director Ted Huffman and his team for bringing craziness to Greenwich.

World Opera Houses Productivity

The Turin newspaper La Stampa published this graph showing the productivity of Italian opera houses vs houses from all over the world, for the 2009-10 season. The first column of numbers indicates how many operas were staged this season, the second is how many were new productions, and the third is how many performances were staged in the full season. Great news for the Met here in New York, but grim news for Italian opera houses. (Click the image to expand).

Luisi to the Rescue!

Alban Berg's Lulu was the last production to be mounted by the Met this season. What a dramatic way to go out! Before my review, there is a little bit of news to start...

Lulu was originally scheduled to be conducted by Met Music Director James Levine, one of if not the foremost conductor of Second Viennese School music. Recurring health problems resulting in surgery forced him to cancel, much to the worry of New York City opera fans. On the flip side, shortly after that announcement, Fabio Luisi took over Mr. Levine's remaining performances of the season, Lulu included. Two weeks ago, he was appointed as the Met's Principal Guest Conductor.

The most remarkable thing about Wednesday night was Mr. Luisi's concentrated and nuanced performance of such a dense work, which proved he is indeed on the same bar as Mr. Levine. Throughout the four hour evening, there was never a moment of lagging energy. Every detail of the score was handled with care and nothing seemed overlooked. There are a few chords at the end of the opera when Jack the Ripper kills Lulu, and the effect was more chilling than any horror movie I've seen. (Granted this was the first time I had heard the entire work, so there was no anticipation). That was just one of many memorable moments. What struck me most was the music's ability to portray such a wide rage of emotions, and to switch gears with almost no notice. From horror to romance, it was all there, even if in condensed form.

Lulu is still a relatively new opera and it's musical ideas are plentiful, almost an amalgam of music history. The work was an exponent of the newly-developed 12-tone technique, which to the naked ear it seems atonal. There are heavy influences of Wagner's grandiosity, and there are even a few samplings of jazz or cabaret music, (probably heard by Berg in Germany's Weimar Republic of the 1920s). The opera only premiered in it's complete version in 1979, years after the composer's death in 1935. Berg died while writing the opera and until 1979 the unfinished version of two acts was performed. However, he left sketches as to how the remaining third act should be orchestrated, but his widow restricted access to them, insisting that Lulu should be left the way it was when Berg died. She finally died in 1976 (no offense). It was then announced that the publisher had granted a secret commission to the Viennese composer Friedrich Cerha to complete the work. The result is a seamless, unified musical experience. The music is as vivid at the end as it is during the first two acts. George Perle summed it up nicely...

"It is in the nature of things that one cannot anticipate the insights, judgments, and second thoughts of genius, so we can never know to what extent and in what respect Berg's own orchestration might have differed from Cerha's. But nowhere does one have the impression that a hand other than the composer's has had to take over the instrumental realization of the unscored portions of the third act."

In addition to the rock solid conductor, the cast was no less impressive. Marlis Petersen, Anne Sofie von Utter, Gary Lehman, and James Morris showed the difference between good singers and those who are emotionally committed. They were riding the wave created by the Poseidon of the evening.

Mr. Luisi's musicality and energy were reminiscent of Mr. Levine's best performances. And though I did not catch it, his Tosca a few weeks ago drew praise from both audiences and critics alike, (a rare occurrence in New York). All of this is more remarkable given that he only made his company debut in 2005. Whatever the future holds for Mr. Levine, and I wish him a speedy recovery, Mr. Luisi's three year contract with the company takes some of the anxiety away about the Met.

After quite an eventful season, the Met went out struttin'. See you in the fall for some Wagner...

New Met Ring Cycle Trailer

This newly released trailer offers some glimpses of the Met's new Wagner Ring Cycle. It is being directed by Robert Lepage, who previously directed Berlioz's Faust at the Met. The first two segments, Das Rheingold and Die Walkure, are premiering next season, and the last two, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, will premier during the 2011-12 season. I'm so freekin' excited!

Two Recitals By Two Very Different Sopranos

Back in November, the legendary dramatic soprano Aprile Millo gave a recital in the Rose Theatre at Jazz at Lincoln Center. This past Thursday, Federica von Stade, a champion for over 40 years of everything from classical to contemporary music, gave her farewell recital at Carnegie Hall. The former was in top vocal form, looking and sounding utterly fabulous after struggling with her weight the past few years. The later was warm, cute, and made a packed Carnegie Hall audience feel right at home. Both recitals were deemed highly successful by audiences and critics alike, and it is only now that I realize one's dramatic superiority over the other.

Both Ms. Millo and Ms. Stade narrated throughout their recitals, and effectively broke down the concert hall divisions between performer and spectator. Ms. Stade however, ended up coming across as a caricature of herself. Before each piece, she explained how it related to her life with a voice like she was narrating a story. Many times it was a song about Paris- "La Vie en rose" by Ned Rorem, "Voyage à Paris" and "Hôtel" by Francis Poulenc, and selections from "Les Jardins de Paris" by Marc Barthomieuand, just to name a few. Okay so she loves the city, but who doesn't? Other times it was a song about a convent, reminiscent of her childhood in Washington, D.C. ("A Prayer to Saint Catherine" by Virgil Thomson), or about her daughter ("Jenny Rebecca" written for her by Carol Hall), or just some topic she found pleasant. Even the Mahler ("Lob des hohen Verstandes", adapted from the folk story The Youth's Magic Horn) was light, where a donkey judges a contest between a cuckoo and a nightingale. Right before intermission, her longtime collaborators, the baritone Richard Stilwell and bass Samuel Ramey joined her for a charming trio rendition of Bernstein's "Some of the Time" from "On the Town." Her final selection, "Send In The Clowns" is always a gem to hear and fit her glimmering voice perfectly. Unfortunately, whatever the song was, it always had a happy ending and was never heart-wrenching. She talked to the audience in an overly dramatic way as if Carnegie Hall was full of children. The end product seemed like a cross between Cinderella and Julie Andrews. Her singing, on the other hand rang with golden and refined glamor, obviously having waned after a long career but still more than pleasant, and more than anything, mature. A successful recital, but a lot was missed. She got so famous in the 1970s by playing Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro, a role full of yearning. That depth was missed here.

By stark contrast is the dramatic soprano Aprile Millo, considered by many to be the last beacon of light in a long line of Verdi sopranos. Her recital back in November is as vivid in my memory as if it were last week. Held in a much smaller venue than Carnegie Hall, The Rose Theatre's small stage and oval structure (like a small opera house) worked nicely, if less gloriously than Carnegie. She made up for the hall's lack in glamor by wearing a huge gown dress and tiara. The house was full with a highly enthusiastic audience.

From start to finish, she sang with as much conviction and unwavering intensity as she does on her most treasured recordings. The first half was full of songs by 19th century composers. Of particular note were Ermanno Wolf Ferrari's "Buondì, cara Venezia" (from Il Campiello), "Von ewiger Liebe" by Johannes Brahms, and "Ne poi, krasavitsa, pri mne" by Sergei Rachmaninoff. Her voice is huge, with a very wide yet sensual vibrato. Her artistic maturity is also rare among singers today, as she infuses passion into every word she sings. In "Buondì, cara Venezia" and "Ne poi, krasavista, pri mne", her elongation of certain words and her ability to sing every note in her range at any dynamic marking made the music even more touching. This is a type of voice rarely heard today.

If the first half was moving, the second half was mesmerizing. After an unexpected early intermission (because of an audience member falling down some stairs), Ms. Millo came back with vigor. Her "Tre Canzone Nepoletane" were accompanied by a musician with equal expressivity, the accordionist Mary-Lou Vetere. And this just served as the warm up for the opera section... Here her complete musical capabilities were unleashed. She sang "Laggiu nel Soledad" from La Fanciulla del West, "Undiste...Ah dove sei crudele" from Il Trovatore, "L'altra notte in fondo al mare" from Boito's Mefistofele, and "Ed ora, io mi domado" from Leoncavallo's Zaza. Her technical control is utterly amazing. In less than a second, she can move from a beautiful pianissimo to the most glass-shattering forte, all while evenly supporting on the same note. The zenith came with "L'altra notte...", which she preceded with a comment asking the audience to bare with her. Here, her artistry and concentration silenced the audience, and the ovations following the piece were apocalyptic. How else could I remember it five months later? Ms. Millo is a singer who has not always been in the spotlight during her 25 year career, but who on that night showed us she is still an artist with drive. Despite my nagging cold, I never got bored.

Both Ms. Stade and Ms. Milo gave successful recitals. Ms. Stade has been and is likely to remain one of the world's most beloved sopranos. But Ms. Millo, even while in a far less glorious hall, pushed herself, lived in the moment, made people scream and made them cry. In my mind, that's what matters most.

"Aria on the Future"

Renée Fleming, the populist diva, talks about her past, present, and future. Wall Street Journal article.

Solid Yet Uninspired Performance of Rare Rossini Opera

Renée Fleming long ago proved that she has some say as to what operas are produced at the Met. A versatile and technically aware singer with a unique buttery sound and enchanting stage presence, she has commanded roles in German, Italian, French, Czech, Russian, etc. and in 2008 became the only woman to highlight an Opening Night Gala for the Met, where she sang three acts from three different operas. Not always thought of as a master bel-canto singer, Ms. Fleming still managed to convinced the Met to stage Armida. An opera by Gioachino Rossini, it is one of the composer's nine serious operas from his time in Naples (1817-1822), and is rich in experimental music characterization. Armida is a sorceress, who throughout a nearly four hour long opera (including two intermissions) travels from desert to magical worlds and seduces six Crusaders, each a tenor role with incredibly difficult music. The opera is rarely staged, partly because of its traditional serious opera format that is so different from Rossini's comedies, but also because it is hard to find six tenors who can sing the music. For the opera's premiere in 1817 Rossini used only four tenors, one for the role of Rinaldo and three others for the remaining five roles. If there is a single 'bravo' to be heard about this production, it is the Met's ability at finding six tenors, each with a unique voice that stands up to the alluring Ms. Fleming.

The quickly rising star, Lawrence Brownlee sang Ronaldo with relaxed beauty, nailing passages throughout the two-and-a-third octaves role. He hit his high Ds with effortless accuracy, (the highest tenor note in the opera). Despite the pluses, his volume and projection were lacking. Singing next to José Manuel Zapata, his voice at times seemed dwarfed. On another note, no matter how much diction training one has, there is still a definite difference between a native English speaker and a native romance language speaker. Sorry to say, but Mr. Brownlee sang like a gringo. The remaining four tenors- Bruce Ford, Kobie van Rensburg, Barry Banks, and Yeghishe Manucharyan stood up to their demanding roles quite nicely.

Though always in control of her voice and full of warm sensual texture, Ms. Fleming seemed restrained last night. She sang pleasantly, but never overwhelmingly. I know she can sing Armida fearlessly because she did so on her "Bel Canto" album in 2002. Has time taken its toll? Probably not, that was only 8 years ago. So what was it?

Quite possibly a lack of inspiration from the conductor and director. Mary Zimmerman's production was largely uninteresting to look at and bordered at being a farce. The only thing that didn't seem to be made cheaply were the costumes, beautifully designed by Richard Hudson. Knights wore shiny silver armor draped with red fabric and the commanders wore long and elegant black suits seamed with bright red. The Act II ballet was entertainingly choreographed by Graciela Daniele in her Met debut, and she successfully made the chorus members 'move'. Does Ms. Zimmerman actually like opera? Certain props from the set looked like they were from a child's playpen, and the white rotunda wall encircling the action was the most boring stationary set-piece I've ever seen. The blocking was uneventful. I simply don't understand how such a magical opera, one with limitless Romantic possibilities, can turn into Sesame Street.

Understandably so, the conductor Riccardo Frizza seemed uninspired. He led a solid performance, though didn't stand out for any strong interpretive choices.

The audience's body language and applause throughout the evening seemed lackadaisical. I heard a few scoffs at the production, and at the curtain call the 'boos' roared out. This time I must admit, I wanted to join them.